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Jonas," said He, "was three days and three nights in the whale's belly. So shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth 1"

Jonah was a preacher of repentance to the Ninevites-Christ preached repentance to the whole world. The Ninevites repented at the preaching of Jonas. At the preaching of Christ thousands were added to his followers.

1 Matt. xii. 40.

MIRACLES.

WE come now to the last division of our work, which, though the last, is not the least in point of importance. Miracles were the most likely to substantiate the Divinity of the Son of God, because they evidenced an inherent power, that only could have proceeded from the Deity. The primary object of Christ's miracles was doubtless to satisfy the minds of the people who witnessed them, that He was God as well as man. Prophecy and types only shadowed Him forth; miracles gave weight to the testimony, and substantiated the evidence previously given under the Old Dispensation. Thus when John sent two disciples to Jesus, to inquire whether He was the Christ, or whether they were to look for another, our Lord's answer was sufficiently emphatic. "Go," said He," and show John again those things which ye do hear and see; the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up, and the poor have

the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me 1."

From hence it certainly appears, that in the miracles which He performed, He wished to establish their conviction, that He was the long-predicted and typified Messiah; but thus viewing the argument, we must be careful not to impute to the Baptist the existence of any doubt upon the subject. John's disciples seem before either to have taken offence, or to have expressed doubts of Christ's claims, when Christ's disciples began to baptize; and those doubts were probably increased when St. John, his forerunner, was cast into prison, and no miraculous power was exerted to effect his liberation. Hence, we cannot imagine the mind of the Baptist, who had borne the earliest testimony to Christ, to have been in any way overshadowed with uncertainty; but must conclude, that he dispatched his disciples on this mission, to remove perplexity from their minds, and establish them in the faith of Christ.

The miracles of Jesus were strong evidences of his Divinity; they proved, by his counteraction of the laws of nature, that He was superior to nature, and, taken in connection with his fulfilment of the Mosaic

1 Matt. xi. 5, 6.

law, with the concentration of the ancient types and prophecies in him, and His introduction of a pure and enlarged theology, itself foretold in the Hebrew books, they proved that He must have been the sublime personage to whom the name of Jehovah was attributed in their Scriptures. These several considerations demonstrated him to be GOD.

The only question which the opponents of Christianity have attempted to urge with effect is, Were these miracles real? claiming as a consequence of the negative, that Jesus was an impostor.

Now, upon the miracles of Jesus, rests his Divinity if the miracles were real, that must necessarily be established; if false, Jesus was an impostor.

Now the reality of the miracles may be proved by the number of witnesses who were present when they were performed, and many of these witnesses having been enemies, would have been the more anxious to examine their reality.

They were wrought in the open day before multitudes; the cures that Jesus effected bore the test of examination; Lazarus had been dead four days before Christ called him again into life. Men were born blind whose eyes received sight; in

short, every miracle that our Lord performed added an additional evidence that he was truly the Son of God.

Had not these miracles been real, the Apostles would hardly have incurred dangers, persecutions, and death, for the sake of the religion which they had preached they must have had ample opportunities to have verified the prior and subsequent facts; they must have been able to have made inquiries respecting the actual state of those healed, and the actual death of those raised, as well as to have ascertained the permanency of the cures and the resuscitations. They could not have been mistaken in what they saw; the three on Mount Tabor must have had full evidence of the attestation of Christ's claims by Heaven at the Transfiguration, and all must have had ocular, and Thomas tangible proof, that Christ really had arisen from the dead;-how therefore could they have doubted his miracles? Would Paul too have dared to preach the gospel of Christ, founded on the accomplishment of types and prophecies, and the reality of his miracles to contemporary Jews, who, if they had been false, would have exposed him, and to inquiring Greeks, who would examine for themselves? Would he have dared to have appealed to his own miraculous conversion, had not ample evidence, both within and without the

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